Economy

The most famous monopolies of that era were John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil and Andrew Carnegie’s steel company. Both of which, like most of the early monopolies, were leveraged off railroads, which were the great new technology of that era. Railways were sort of the Internet of the 19th century, and like the Internet they allowed people to concentrate power in entirely new ways.

U.S. producers “call me when they see the price band drop down and they see investors starting to turn away, and they say it’s time to do something,” Al-Falih said, according to Bloomberg. “They want us to do all of the work and they want to take the benefit, but that’s, you know, that’s life.”

It does seem like the days of foreign states being bullied into adopting a dangerous foreign policy are over. If Washington has any doubt about this, they need only turn to this exclusive Reuters report which revealed that India had begun paying Iran for its oil in rupees, according to a senior bank official, under the guise of a six-month waiver which was given to seven other countries (including China). According to the report, in a previous round of US-imposed sanctions, India settled approximately half of oil payments in rupees and the remainder in euros. However, this time around, all payments are to be made in rupees.

Citing anonymous sources, the Journal said that an indictment could be coming soon on allegations that Huawei stole Tappy, a T-Mobile technology which mimicked human fingers and was used to test smartphones.

Huawei said in a statement the company and T-Mobile settled their disputes in 2017 following a US jury verdict that found “neither damage, unjust enrichment nor willful and malicious conduct by Huawei in T-Mobile’s trade secret claim”.

Ebola virus disease, which has a relatively long incubation period of approximately eight to 21 days, is transmitted through contact with blood or secretions from an infected person, either directly or through contaminated surfaces, needles or medical equipment.

The two provinces where cases in the latest outbreak are being reported share porous borders with South Sudan, Uganda and Rwanda, raising the risk of national and regional spread.

Jon Bloostein operates six New York City restaurants that employ between 50 and 110 people each. The owner of Heartland Brewery and Houston Hall, Bloostein said the effect of the higher minimum wage on payroll across locations represents “an immense cost” to his business.

“We lost control of our largest controllable expense,” he told CBS MoneyWatch. “So in order to live with that and stay in business, we’re cutting hours.”

The reason for the scary numbers isn’t what you would think: Most doctors say it’s the level of paperwork and data input they’ve had to do since medical records went digital. Doctors end up spending about 45 minutes per patient visit on tasks like “inputting data codes for the visit,” Nazario says, leaving little face-to-face time with patients.

Something’s gone terribly wrong. Doctors are among the most technology-avid people in society; computerization has simplified tasks in many industries. Yet somehow we’ve reached a point where people in the medical profession actively, viscerally, volubly hate their computers.

As part of Merk’s in-house research we regularly evaluate a consistent set of charts covering the economy, equities, fixed income, commodities and currencies. The aim is to keep our eyes open and to look through the noise of the headlines, avoiding the distractions of sensationalized click-bait. In sharing this content, we offer a cross-check to your own thinking and aim to add value to your own process.

“The Slate writer said she had complained last Friday and then saw different search results before YouTube responded to her on Monday,” Breitbart cited an employee writing in the discussion thread. “And lo and behold, the [changelog] was submitted on Friday, December 14 at 3:17 PM.”

“Historically, when the Saudis have cut output, it’s heavy and medium crude,” a senior analyst from consultancy Turner Mason & Co. told Bloomberg’s Robert Tuttle and Sheela Toben. This means lower heavy crude production in Canada has combined with the consistent decline in Venezuelan oil output, unlikely to be reversed in the observable future, and now with expected lower heavy and medium crude production from Saudi Arabia. No wonder prices are spiking.

The practice of artificially inducing rainfall in China is not new, the country manipulated the weather over Beijing just before and during the 2008 Beijing Olympics to ensure a rain-free event. The practice has only grown in scale as part of the Sky River Project aimed at increasing China’s water resources for its billions of people.

There was still 5% of the crop to be harvested in Alberta when snow and/or cold weather set in. However after a 4-week period the temperature did warm up and the soil dried allowing most of harvest to be completed. About 500 acres had to be abandoned. Colour was lost after the cold and warehouses containing those potatoes are being monitored closely for storage issues.

Gold & Silver

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